A Petrarchan sonnet
based on a character
in the Ramayana
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A Petrarchan sonnet
based on a character
in the Ramayana
Sign in to Granta.com.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Born in 1952 in Calcutta, India, Vikram Seth was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Stanford University and Nanjing University. He has travelled widely and lived in Britain, California, India and China. His epic novel, A Suitable Boy (1993), won the WH Smith Literary Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book). He is also the author of An Equal Music (1999), From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983), an account of a journey through Tibet, China and Nepal that won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and Arion and the Dolphin: A Libretto (1994), which was performed at the English National Opera in June 1994, with music by Alec Roth. His poetry includes Mappings (1980), The Humble Administrator’s Garden (1985), winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia), and All You Who Sleep Tonight: Poems (1990).
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‘Ask anyone in Ayodhya, and they will say the city’s Hindu–Muslim harmony can withstand any test.’
Snigdha Poonam on the construction of a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque in Utter Pradesh.
‘The town’s fate was tied to poor development and ecological disaster.’
Amitava Kumar visits a Himalayan town.
“I’m from here. I grew up here. In fact, that’s why the government invited me back for this work.”
Short fiction by Karan Mahajan.
‘India, as we know it, is changing. What will it become?’
Memoir by Amitava Kumar.
‘In Delhi the heat is chemical, something unworldly, a dry bandage or heating pad wrapped around the body.’
Memoir by Amitava Kumar.
‘I repeat: the landscape of war is an acoustic landscape.’
Peter Englund on the war in Ukraine, translated from the Swedish by Sigrid Rausing.
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